A Feeling, and a Hope
by flume00200
Summary: Have you ever gone through a time in your life where you didn't feel like what was happening should have been, but you tried to make it work anyways?


**Hey y'all. Kinda new to this whole writing thing. Tried once before, never kept up. So here's the second attempt.**

**I'm not even really a fan of Glee. In fact, I kind of strongly dislike it, because the music is just awful. But I really the whole Brittany/Santana thing. AND I DON'T KNOW WHY.**

**Anyways, here's a starter. If you like it, let me know. If you don't let me know. Nicely, please.**

**p.s 5 points to anyone who can name the song ;p**

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><p>"<em>It started out as a feeling, which then turned into a hope, which then grew into a quiet thought, which then grew into a quiet hope. <em>

_And then the word grew louder and louder, 'till there was a battle cry."_

I'd heard those lyrics somewhere, and I just couldn't remember where. They were pounding in my head, drilling themselves into my memory. They had kind of become that one thing that was always in the back of my mind. I didn't even know the song, and I probably never will, but they will always be there. I wasn't even sure what they meant, but still, they will always be there.

I'm not very good with words. Not with speaking them, not with writing them, not with understanding them. Maybe if I had been a little smarter with words, everything would have been easier, and then there would be no use for the story I'm about to tell you.

But if everything were easy, then there would be no mistakes, and no one would learn anything.

Have you ever gone through a time in your life where you didn't feel like what was happening should have been, but you tried to make it work anyways? Like, you could find a mouse on the sidewalk, beaten and bruised, most like diseased as well, just waiting for its death, but you just have to pick it up and at least try to save it?

Or, in my case, a person walks into your life, and you can't help but want to be near them all the time? Even when you know that things shouldn't work between the two of you, you use anything you can to make it work? You give up everything you had worked for to try and start again just to include a single person in your life, even though you know you shouldn't. But you can't just help it, can you? I couldn't. I needed her in my life. I just needed to know how things would go. I tried, because I knew that if I didn't, I'd be regretting it for the rest of my days. Even if I had stayed on track and succeeded, I wouldn't have felt _complete_ because she wasn't there.

And I'm glad I tried. Because it did work. And even though I never finished _everything_ I wanted, some of the most important things to me were still there.

I'm going to stop talking now, and just start the story.

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><p>The first time I saw her, I was seven years old. I was on the swing set, she was on the slide. I watched her as she slid, that precious smile lighting up her face as if nothing could measure up to that feeling. Every time she climbed off, my eyes would follow her as she'd race back around the jungle gym and to the slide. I just sat there. No swings swinging, but just another tiny seven year old on the playground at recess.<p>

I don't know how time ended up passing so quickly, but too soon, the bell was ringing and children were being rounded up and taken back inside, away from the fun and games, back to spelling or multiplying or memorizing the names of the Iroquois.

The next day, I perched myself in the same spot on the same swings and waited for slide-girl to come outside. She never came. I wondered why. Nobody ever told me. But then again, I never asked. Every day, I waited. I didn't think of it as being 'creepy' back then, but we were seven, so it didn't even matter. One day, I had finally asked the teacher.

"Um, Ms. Camille?" I started my question shyly, hands tucked behind my back and bouncing on my toes. "Where is slide-girl?"

She looked at me and crouched to my level. "Well, I don't know, honey. Who is slide-girl?"

"The girl who really likes the slide." I remember watching Ms. Camille as her eyes darted over to the slide.

"Well, is she over there?" My eyes followed hers, already knowing she wasn't there. I just didn't want her to think I hadn't already looked. "Is she any of those girls?"

I studied the group of girls that had since huddled around the slide, but she still wasn't there.

"No." I replied as sternly as a seven year old could.

"Well, what does slide girl look like?"

I felt my face lift and the smile that had spread itself across my face without permission. "Well, she's got really pretty hair, and really pretty skin, and clothes, and eyes, and her sneakers were really cool!" I had gotten a little too excited and started jumping instead of bouncing. Ms. Camille planted her hands on my shoulders to stop me before speaking back.

"Well, don't you think all of these girls have pretty hair? Because they all do."

"Well, yes, but not as pretty as slide-girl's."

A frown graced Ms. Camille's face and she spoke up. "Well, I can't help you then. I think that _all_ of these girls have really pretty hair and clothes and sneakers. I don't think I'll be able to find _your_ slide-girl for you. Now come on, recess is just about to end." She took my hand and tugged me away as I made one last, desperate search for Slide-girl, before being taken back to the memorizing and the spelling and the multiplying.

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><p>I only ever saw Slide-girl in the hallways then. When we got to the sixth grade, I had a social studies, English, and science class with her. Eventually I found out her real name. Santana. I knew I liked it immediately. Occasionally, we would be put it the same group but I would never talk to her. It was too intimidating, because I was so fascinated with her but didn't even know why. Most of the time she was snappy to the other people in our groups, but they must have just annoyed her. She was always nice to me, probably because I never said anything. I just did what she told me to.<p>

So when she came up to me after school that one day in seventh grade, I didn't know what to do.

"Hey," I heard her call behind me. I didn't think she was talking to me, so I kept walking. "Hey!" She called again, "Are you ignoring me on purpose?" She had stepped up beside me and we were now walking at the same pace, side by side.

"Oh, sorry. I wasn't. I didn't know you were speaking to me." I shrugged, trying to keep my eyes forward.

"Well, it's not like there's anyone else around." I shrugged again. "You're Brittany, right? We went to the same elementary school. You always sat on the same swing every day."

Finally, I turned to her. "How do you even remember that?" I tried, nonchalantly.

This time, she shrugged. "I don't know. Good memory, I guess. So, you _do _recognize me." She made a tiny but triumphant _ hmph_.

My eyes grew wide, and I grew nervous. I began to stutter, "How do you kn—"

"You asked how I _remembered_ that, not how I knew it." She smirked, clearly confident in herself.

I shrugged even more. It was all I really knew how to do, I guess. "I guess you're right."

We kept walking, silently. It was awkward. I wondered if she shared the same amount of fascination that I had of her with anything at all. Cats, music, whatever. I really just wondered if it was normal to be so fascinated with someone or something without even knowing why.

"Do you live in this area?" She chirped.

"Yeah, I live about five blocks from here. Over on Bennison." I lamely pointed the direction I was walking. "Do you?"

"No," she sighed. "I just like walking. I don't like being home so early. It's a nice place around here. Not like mine."

"What yours like?"

I watched as Slide-girl's—no, Santana's face tighten just slightly, and her brow furrowed just as much. "Not great. Let's talk about something else. Why don't you talk to anybody at school?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?"

I focused my attention to the clouds, and closed my eyes briefly. "I just don't know. Never thought about it, I guess."

"But you're talking to me."

She caught me off guard with that. "You're right, I guess. Again."

"So, you don't really have any friends then?"

Her questions made me kind of uncomfortable, because she was asking things I didn't have answers to. I realized that I didn't really have friends, but I didn't see how that was bad. Everyone always said that like it was a bad thing, but I enjoyed it. "No, not really. Do you?"

She was silent for a few moments, so I turned my head towards her. Her expression was blank, and completely impossible to read. Not that I was any good at reading emotions. As Santana had just pointed out, I didn't talk to anybody, really, so I hadn't had much experience in that.

"I don't actually know. Sort of, I guess." She turned her attention to her shoes instead of the sidewalk.

"You should watch the sidewalk. You don't want to get hurt."

She looked back to me briefly. "You're watching it enough for us." She smiled.

"Okay…" I drawled out quietly. "What do you mean, you _sort of_ have friends?" I hoped I wasn't too nosy. I didn't want to make her feel bad.

"There are people that I talk to, but not any of them I really _enjoy_ talking to."

I made a quiet 'oh' and kept walking. I turned left onto the last street before my own. "So where are you going right now?"

"I don't know."

"You seem to know less than me right now." I giggled because I thought it was funny. I don't think she got it, because her face was just confused. Then a question popped into my head, and I tried to seal my lips so it wouldn't escape. I wanted to ask it so bad, but I couldn't.

"Do you want to come over to my house?"

It slipped out anyways. I mentally cursed myself and wished that I could just suck the words back into my mouth.

"Sure." Santana replied quickly and easily, like it was the question she had been waiting to hear. But she didn't seem like that kind of person. I didn't know what to think of it. Instead, I just kept walking silently, leading us back to my house.

When we stepped inside, my mom came out of nowhere like she already knew Santana was here. "Hi, I'm Susan. Brittany's mom." She held her hand out for Santana to take. Santana did, surprisingly, but with a bit of hesitation.

"Hi. Santana."

Before anything else could happen, I grabbed Santana's arm and dragged her to my room. I could hear my mom yelling something, but I tried really hard not to pay attention. It worked. I took Santana to my room and set her bag on the floor right next to the door. She immediately wandered around my room, looking at all of the things I had tacked in. She grabbed a picture of the wall, carefully.

"Who's this?" She pointed to Shannon, my younger sister. I remember that picture. We had both just gone on our first boat ride, and we both cried a lot. I guess we had that in common, that we didn't like the boat ride.

"My younger sister. We were on a boat, and we both cried."

"Why?"

"We were scared."

"Of what?" Santana's constant questions were surprising, because she never seemed to be a person who would be interested in someone else's life. I didn't mean for that to sound as bad as it did, but it's true. I think she just realized that a lot of other people wouldn't have really cared, so she never bothered to care. Then I wondered why she cared now.

"The water. Neither of us had been swimming before, either. I really like swimming now, though." I sat on my bed and watched as she still paced the room.

"Oh, cool." She said and put the picture back before joining me on the bed. "What's your favorite animal?"

"Ducks." That was so easy.

"Really?"

"Yeah. What's yours?"

"Don't have one."

"Oh."

Things went on like that for a little while. I learned that she kind of liked singing, kind of liked dancing, and kind of wanted to be a cheerleader when we got to high school. She had a lot of kind of's.

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><p>It got dark really quickly and we had moved to the floor, that way we could both lay down. Another question came to my mind and just like earlier, it came out before I could stop it.<p>

"Santana, why did you talk to me today?"

"Hm, I don't know. Do you not want to talk?"

I propped myself up on my elbows so I could look at her laying the other way. Her eyes were closed, but I saw her pretty hair and clothes and skin still. Just as pretty as it was seven years ago on the playground. "No, I was just wondering. You just never seemed like a person that would…_reach out_ like this…" I tried to make the _reach out_ try not to sound so cheesy and stuff, because I don't think it would have been very cool, and I think Santana thought I was at least a little bit cool. Or else she wouldn't have been at my house still, right?

"I don't really know if this is normal for me either, actually."

I made another quiet 'oh'. "It's getting kind of late. Do you live far? I could ask my mom to give you a ride home, if you want."

She propped herself up to the same position I was in. "No, I don't live to far. I can walk."

"Are you sure?"

She nodded, and got up. "You're right. It is getting dark. I should probably go home soon."

"Well, I didn't mean right now, but if you want to…"

"I don't really want to. But I probably should." She grabbed all of her things and opened the door "Thanks for hanging out tonight, Brittany. It was nice." I got up and followed her, walking her out of the house. That was the proper thing to do. Before she stepped out into the fall night, she turned back to me. "I like you, Brittany. A lot more than my other…friends." Her eyes faltered at that last word, and I just wanted to hug her and make her feel all better. But she had to go, and I wasn't sure if I was allowed to hug her. So I just nodded and thanked her. "See you tomorrow."

"Bye, Santana. See you."

And then she left, walking briskly away from my house and down the street.

I really hoped she didn't live really far.


End file.
